Library of Congress Catalog card number 72-84271, ISBN 0 677 12480 (cloth); 0 677 12485 6 (paper). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Printed in Great Britain.

"In the final analysis our compass must be our relationship with a central order . . . "

WERNER HEISENBERG Physics and Beyond, 1971

Dedicated to

ALFRED E. EMERSON

who taught me the basic principles of ecology and who -- as Chairman of the University of Chicago's Interdivisional Committee for Unified Science, 1940-1943 -- launched the course of events which has resulted in this book and the others which are to follow.

EDITOR'S STATEMENT:
THIS IS A SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

Edward Haskell1

This symposium volume announces the results of a project begun in 1948 at the Centenary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.2 The Council for Unified Research and Education, established at that time, is here announcing the results of its then twenty-one year effort: Assembly of the Sciences into a Single Discipline.

Why have we waited to announce them all at once? "The kind of change we need probably cannot occur piecemeal," said Jerome Wiesner to C. P. Snow in a televised discussion. "It probably has to happen all at once." And Snow agreed: The reason Wiesner gave is, that "The forces of tradition are strong and piecemeal changes tend to get changed back."3

To this important reason, another is added by Thomas Kuhn: Implicit in the traditional assortment of separate disciplines is the tacit assumption, the paradigm, that their data are at bottom structurally diverse. As Kuhn points out, however, "A scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternative candidate is available. The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously to accept another."4

The contrary hypothesis underlying our assembly of sciences is, that All natural systems have a common underlyng structure; and that the Periodic Table of Chemical elements is its special atomic case. And, since an assembly is a single thing, it has to be displayed and examined all at once.

Extension of this Periodic table's structure to each of these parts of science involves what Willard V.Quine calls "clearing up the similarity notion" and discovering the universe's "natural kinds." And the procedure of extending to all of these kinds of theories a single and well established structure guarantees that these "branches of science would qualify as unified, or integrated into our inclusive
systematization of nature . . . [for it makes] their several similarity concepts . . . compatible; capable of meshing . . ."5

We announced these results in 1969, in honor of Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev's Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. But the fact that this was the centenary of its announcement was our least important reason. (His famous paper was presented in his absence, due to illness, before the Russian Chemical Society in St. Petersburg on March 6, 1869, and was entitled The Dependence Between the Properties and the Atomic Weights of the Elements.6) Our primary reason for convening this (1969) symposium is that Mendeleev's insight and audacity, celebrated among chemists, is here extended to all-repeat, all-the sciences; and that his farthest out vision is, in this symposium, not transcended, but faithfully fulfilled:
"It is the function of science," Mendeleev declared to his chemistry students, "to discover the existence of a general reign of order in nature, and to find the causes governing this order. And this refers in equal measure to the relations of man--social and political--and to the entire universe as a whole . . ."6

How happy Dimitri Ivanovich would have been if he could have heard us fulfil his intuitive prediction. However, I'm pleased to say that some of his compatriots did: The Voice of America included them with us in our Boston hall: that morning's Russian broadcast featured our symposium.

The structure of Mendeleev's "general reign of order in the entire universe as a whole" is represented by our fold-out at the end of the book. (If the reader stands it in clear view he will see in a few glances how simply this assembly works.)--Is not the Periodic co-ordinate system (right-hand side) with its five Periodic tables (and spaces for two more which are still missing) mapped into it--is it not also the fulfilment of the Royal Society's ambitious objective, set forth in 1663? Its first objective, as you remember, was the development of our discrete, one-field sciences, which has now been pretty well fulfilled. Its second objective was all but glossed over. It was stated in a single sentence: "The compiling of a complete system of solid philosophy."7 Of this system we present a model. Mendeleev's "general reign of order in the entire universe" turns out to be so constructed that our pursuit of the objectives we published in Science has turned out to be a model of the Royal Society's "complete system of solid philosophy."

We stated our objectives in Science as follows: To "advance social science through the stages of natural classification and evolution theory, into that achieved by the physical sciences, where scientific fields are connected, and science is closely linked to philosophy and technology."2

In fact, it appears to fulfill, model, map, complete, execute, generalize and assemble all the theories and predictions listed in the left-hand column of our fold-out chart, and many more for which there was no space. In his address as retiring President of the A.A.A.S. James B. Conant had said: "I place science within the area of accumulative knowledge," and had urged the coordination of its role in our society.8--The theoretical condition for doing this was, as we announced in Science, "The independent discoveries of parts of the same general conceptual scheme by students of plant, animal, and human coactions . . ."9 This conceptual scheme was the old Periodic Table's underlying structure; and once these independent discoveries of it were recognized as such, they were developed into the Periodic tables represented in our wall display. The geometric representation of their common or universal characteristics, the Periodic co-ordinate system shown in its center, appears thus to be a model of Leibniz' celebrated project, the Characteristica Universalis.10

Our 1948 announcement in Science concluded with this conditional prediction: "Should this scheme prove to be a natural classification, it would create conditions for rapid coordination and advance of social sciences, as the Periodic Table did in Chemistry."2 Its fulfilment will be set forth in our chapter on "The Periodic Table of Human Cultures."

The object of this expanded symposium is to submit our results to the scientific community so that it can judge whether or not our announced objective has been reached; and so that, if it has been reached, we can in the social and ecological sciences start reaping the kind of benefits which Mendeleev's Periodic Table, the first step in this process, conferred on the physical sciences a century ago. Namely, meaningful organization of masses of accumulated data, resolution of their paralyzing communication noise and fouling, predictions and discoveries of missing concepts and data, and increased capability of predicting changes of natural and psychosocial phenomena, and of inducing, modifying, or preventing them. In short, gaining at least some control over our destiny.

This book is an expansion of the Twenty-first Anniversary Symposium of the Council for Unified Research and Education. The original symposium was conducted, very appropriately, under the auspices of our sister organization, the Society for General Systems Research, of which all our participants but one are members.11

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1.

Arranger of the symposium; and chairman of the Council for Unifled Research and Education: C.U.R.E., Inc.

Sir Henry Lyons, The Royal Society, 1600-1940--A History of its Administration Under its Charter, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1944.

8.

James B. Conant, "The Role of Science in Our Unique Society." Address of the retiring president of the A.A.A.S., Chicago, Dec. 1947, Science, Vol. 107, Jan. 23, 1948, p. 78.

9.

Edward F. Haskell with the collaboration of Burton Wade and Jerome Pergament: "The Coaction Compass: A General Conceptual Scheme based upon the Independent Systematizations of Coactions Among Plants by Gause, Animals by Haskell, and Men by Moreno, Horney, Lundberg and Others." (The symposium's mimeographed convening paper.)2